Synthesis - James Swallow [84]
Sethe started forward in sudden panic. “What are you doing?”
“Please remain calm, Lieutenant,” replied Tuvok. “The activation-reset cycle on this model of transporter will take too long to beam us off the Holiday one by one. Therefore, I am overriding its control functions to take us all in a single sequence.”
Dakal threw a worried glance back toward the cockpit and the oncoming Null. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“In these circumstances, that is a question of degree,” said Tuvok. “Setting coordinates for the planetary surface.” He tapped in a string of commands and hit the activation key. “Energizing.”
Pava couldn’t help it. As the familiar tingling sensation enveloped her, she closed her eyes—
Caught in the ice world’s gravity well, the Shuttlecraft Holiday fell straight and steady, on an uncontrolled course toward the frozen surface that would have ended in a destructive impact and a crater a kilometer wide; but instead, the Null mass spun around its own axis and turned into something resembling the head of an arrow. The tip changed states from phased matter to something so dense it could only be tolerated by the physics of this dimension for fractions of a second. The Null tore through the canopy of the shuttle and ripped it open from bow to stern, tearing the Starfleet vessel into pieces with the force of its passage.
—and then the prickling of her skin faded away, and Pava felt the tug of gravity on her body. She released a breathy gasp that sounded like a gunshot concussion inside the suit helmet and staggered, falling to her knees. The impact was painful. Blinking, she opened her eyes to fogged vision. Fighting off the shaking in her hands, she took a moment to take stock. She’d been through rough transports before, and she knew the drill. It was something they taught you in security operations school: how to handle what the instructors had euphemistically called “a hard beam.”
Mentally, the Andorian checked herself over—no pain in the joints, no aches in the torso that could be the signs of an incorrect integration of body tissues or some other minor pattern mismatch. The soft tissues in her mouth and the skin of her face felt dry, a sure sign of electrolyte loss, but that was the worst of it.
Pava sank back into a crouch, blinking furiously until her vision started to clear. White blobs resolved into the shapes of humanoid figures in bulky Starfleet spacesuits. To her relief, there were three of them, and each one appeared to have the requisite number of arms and legs in the right places.
“Lieutenant sh’Aqabaa?” Tuvok’s voice sounded in her ear. “Are you injured?”
She glanced down at the biomonitor on her wrist guard before answering. “A little shook up, sir, but otherwise fine.” Pava straightened and saw Sethe bend over, his shoulders rising and falling as he hyperventilated.
“That…” said the Cygnian, “that was extremely unpleasant.”
“Better than being dead,” said Dakal. She immediately heard the pain in his voice.
“Ensign, what’s wrong?”
“This.” He held up his right hand, and something seemed off. Pava moved closer, and she noticed that the material of the suit’s glove was discolored, turned gray.
Then Pava realized that what she was actually looking at was part of Dakal’s fingers, merged into the matter of the glove. “A slight transporter error, it would appear.” He was trying to be stoic, but the young officer couldn’t quite pull it off.
Sethe pulled a tricorder from his belt and ran it over the Cardassian. “I’m not detecting any other mismatches. If we can get to another transporter soon, we could probably reverse the effect before any permanent damage is done, sir.” When Tuvok didn’t respond, Sethe turned toward him. “Commander?”
Pava turned as well, looking in the same direction as the Vulcan, and that was when it hit her. There was no